To the Pretentious Pits of Cinematic Hell

Forgive me for my rather unfriendly retitling of Terrence Malick's latest, To the Wonder; I really had no choice.  Coming less than two years after his last film, The Tree of Life in all its Palme D'Or, thrice Oscar-nominated art house success glory, it's at first jarring just to settle into this new found prolific era for the famously reclusive filmmaker who used to enchant and startle the cinematic culture with a film once every decade or so.  Whatever is the impetus for his unexpected productivity (he's got a few more projects on the ways as well), To the Wonder feels nothing more than a highly stylized and mighty pointy middle finger to...well I'm not sure to whom exactly, but it's pointed for sure.  A love story between two aimless archetypal figures played by glamorous movie stars is the focal point for To the Wonder, but the mostly montage of a film plays like a gorgeously lit Instagram profile recapping the joys and sorrows of a summertime fling.  That may appear harsh considering the high minded frame from which Malick is coming from and his impossibly idyllic imagery, but the drama, the backbone, the pulse, the spark of To the Wonder is so elusive that Mr. Malick, either consciously or not, refuses to share it with the audience.

We start in Paris as Olga Kurylenko, a former Bond girl and last year one of the Seven Psychopaths, plays girl and lover to Ben Affleck, former matinee idol turned awards-bait golden boy.  They are in harmonic bliss as blandly nondescript narration whispers greeting card displays of affection along with foreshadowing of future unhappiness.  Forget all that-- they're in love.  Kurylenko, in a performance or pantomime of exhausting physicality, dances and prances and skips and jumps on beds and scampers about in fits of joy and sadness.  She has a young daughter who is equally in awe of her mother's new American friend and a similarly balletic composure.  Affleck is stoic, cool and reserved, delivering his six or so lines of dialogue with a plain, simple disposition as he paces and broods and makes googly eyes at his pretty lover.

The action (as well as the prancing) moves to Kansas as Affleck takes the two lovely French ladies back home, and for a stretch To the Wonder plays like lost scenes of idealized Americana left over from the finished cut of The Tree of Life.  Nothing much happens, or matters, incidentally, but the camera moves so swiftly and gingerly, seemingly as in awe with the possibilities of burgeoning love as the two movie stars appear to be.  Instead of drama, To the Wonder offers circumstance, as the lovely French ladies are sent back to Paris as their visas are about to expire...and the American brooder takes up a fling with another beautiful woman-- a rancher played by Rachel McAdams.  There's a reconciliation, of course (along with more prancing), but that's when the nagging asides of To the Wonder pitter-patter to a continual stench of nothingness.  It's important to note the glamor of the movie stars as they appear in so perfectly coiffed and remarkably beautiful in contrast to the regular (and one assumes, non-professional) supporting passerbys.  Kurylenko, Affleck and McAdams are magazine chic.

Meanwhile, Javier Bardem plays a local priest who pops by occasionally to offer sullen and disillusioning takes on society as a whole.  This may be the literal interpretation that Malick has ever expressed in his continual takes on faith and the divine, but more importantly, the only small nugget of substance that seemingly can be gathered in To the Wonder is the conceit that the longing and suffering of its characters comes from a disbelief or lack of faith in the almighty himself.  While as an exploratory means of art that may be all well and good, but Malick drags his heels in the mud in the final stretch of To the Wonder which plays more so as a preachy advertisement than a thread of dramatic stitching.

It goes almost without saying that the camera work is astonishing.  To the Wonder reconnects Malick with his go-to lenser Emmanuel Lubezki, whose visceral setups and expert frame work are art gallery-worthy, or at the least, screen savor worthy.  However, even despite the beauty To the Wonder manages to film, there's a hollow, shallow emptiness to the entire movie.  There's nothing to cling to, either by way of nostalgia or novelty, and for the first time in his career, Malick seems to have, perhaps, been swayed by the decades of being heralded a filmmaking genius, and offers little more than post card ready snapshots shot to the ether ready to raved and lavished upon.  F

Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Go Back to a Crappy Art House Theater!

What on earth is happening to Terrence Malick?  Less than two years after the ponderous art house experiment The Tree of Life (my initial thoughts here) won him the Palme D'Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and earned three Academy Awards nominations (including a director nomination for Malick), he's returned with his latest, and it's already been screened at festivals (notably, last falls Venice Film Festival) and has a distributor (Magnolia Pictures) and a stateside release date (April 13th.)  I'm confused and boggled and nearly dumbstruck, and not just in the sense that I'm still kind of reeling over The Tree of Life and it's metaphysical whatsits.  First a bit of trivia--  Malick, in his fabled forty career has only released five motion pictures so far and is known and prone to take his time; for a new Malick entry to be ready a mere two years after last one was released and thusly heralded the masterpiece, as it would be, in many corners of the cinematic universe, is unheard of--- craziness.  The steadiest he's ever worked before was between his brilliant debut Badlands (1973) and his follow-up, Days of Heaven, which made its way to theaters five years later.

What's to speak of his new found productivity, and as The Tree of Life professed...is it a good thing?  So comes To the Wonder, a romantic spiritual something or other starring new-crowned Oscar king of the world Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem.  Some things in the canon of Malick's wonder never change as Rachel Weisz, Michael Sheen, Amanda Peet, Barry Pepper and Tree of Life alum Jessica Chastain all filmed roles that were eventually cut-- a business as usual affair when working for the reclusive artiste (Jim Caviezel famously thought he was the headliner of The Thin Red Line before realizing his part was all but vanished from the final product-- legend states he found out at the films premiere.)  But regardless of productivity, To the Wonder as crackled down into trailer format looks more of the same hopelessly beautiful lost art sans narrative that The Tree of Life wrought.  Sure, ace cinematography Emmanuel Lubezki is back, and he is any filmmaker's best asset, but will To the Wonder dither away with the same sheen of art house pornography?

The story as described by IMDb states To the Wonder is:

After visiting Mont Saint-Michel, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Marina meets a priest and fellow exile, who is struggling with his vocation, while Neil renews his ties with a childhood friend, Jane.

Early reviews suggest that in the wake of The Tree of Life, perhaps Malick may have lost some of his magic:


Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter

However accomplished Malick's technique might be in some ways, this mostly comes off, especially in the laborious second hour, as visual doodling without focused thematic goals.

Richard Corliss, Time Magazine

A ramble through the ecstasies of the natural world as experienced or ignored by little people on a giant, gorgeous planet.

A bigger question from me is, will there be dinosaurs?

Venice Film Festival

The awards seasons has officially begun with the Venice International Film Festival unveiling the winners, as the Telluride Film Festival and Toronto Film Festival continue to unleash and distinguish the haves vs. the havenots.  Paul Thomas Anderson's greatly anticipated Scientology-soaked feature The Master makes huge strides toward eventual Oscar-dom, winning two prizes at Venice, while failing to take the top award.  Michael Mann headed the jury.  the winners:

Golden Lion: Pieta, directed by Kim Ki-duk

Silver Lion (Best Director): Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

Special Jury Prize: Paradise: Faith, directed by Ulrich Seidl

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Wonder what the Academy will do with the possibility of both being considering leading actor-- usually one gets downsized to supporting, however the monumental-ness of the performances\performers seems a crime to do so in this case.

Best Actress: Hadas Yaron, Fill the Void

Best Screenplay: Something in the Air- Olivier Assayas

Technical Achievement Award: It Was the Son- Daniele Cipri

Best Young Actor: Fabrizio Falco, It Was the Son and Dormant Beauty

The other main attraction out of Venice was the latest by Terrence Malick, To the Wonder, starring Javier Bardem, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Olga Kurylenko, a mere fourteen months after The Tree of Life opened in theaters.  The reviews were mixed as many argued that the film was even less accessible and free of dialogue than the former.  The film is still awaiting a distributor, however one can at the very least except that the religiously-scoped love story is scrumptiously filmed...cinematographer\poet Emmanuel Lubezki filmed this one as well.   

The Tree of Life: Part Two Watching the Film

In a film that runs for two-hours and eighteen minutes, with years (decades?) in development\production from one of cinemas most finicky and iconoclastic filmmakers as notorious backstory, The Tree of Life has so much to live up to that no film treatment could possibly-- not even a film that charts the evolution and meaning of existence itself-- give it proper justice.  Directed by Terrence Malick, whose four-decade career has spawned five feature films and a reputation that would put most to shame, cobbles together a superbly well-photographed piece of experimental filmmaking that's unabashedly and irrefutably remarkable, while also tedious, insufferable and perhaps a bit too on the nose in it's symbolism.  And while the wind-blown shots of grass and epic shots of nature (a Malick staple forever) are awe-inspiring, one must also ask the question, as to whether the famed and famously press-shy filmmaker ever intended The Tree of Life, obviously a rare and personal project, to be anything more than a delectably choreographed home movie, a pet film of sorts.  And while there's certainly nothing wrong with inaccessible pieces of work that are meant to provoke, challenge and awe, ones rooted in pure auteur sensibilities, there's a nagging second question evoked by Malick's latest pretty meditation: Is it provoking or challenging?  Does the film grab emotionally or intellectually?  Is the full besieged by the power of it's parts?  All of those questions are, of course, answered by the eyes of the beholder, each likely to see and feel something entirely different.

What I saw was a meticulously crafted, beautifully filmed piece of gobbledygook.  Malick's powers as a filmmaker and visual stylist\poet are unparalleled on American shores, or international ones as well, but there pretty images all lead up to a strangely distancing film that always appears to keep its audience at arms length.  The Tree of Life is a singular, and maddening exploration (perhaps) of the meaning and origin of life as seen through the prism of a 1950s nuclear family.  Mr. O'Brien (played with maturity and strong willed precision by Brad Pitt) is the breadwinner, and a signifier for the harsher, crueler aspects of the universe, thus the films representation of nature.  He teaches his three young sons to be tough and that to get what they want out of life, they must demand the respect and intimate the belittling forces outside.  In perhaps a Darwinian sense of irony, Mr. O'Brien is a bit of failure, a dreamer and owner of several patents never seen to fruition, giving up his big plans for a better future for his young children.  He's also a harsh disciplinarian, demanding much from his young sons (perhaps too much) and emphases the powers of strength, mostly externally.

On the other side, and I suppose the counter force of the film is Mrs. O'Brien (played with soft and loving gestures by Jessica Chastain) who represents grace.  Doting and motherly (perhaps so much so that it falls into caricature), Mrs. O'Brien is ethereal and all pleasing, extolling kindness and tenderness to her three young sons.  This is seen is exquisitely bright montages of her playing and chasing and running around with her children.  I'm not quite sure what the intention Mr. Malick really had for the Mrs. O'Brien role, a cipher and idealized; she comes across as a mixed between a 1950s sitcom mom with her pretty dresses and well-managed hair-dos crossed with a Disney princess (there's a scene where animals are drawn to her that might be the closest thing to levity here), always with arms extended...she's practically going to break down in song at any second.  But, by design, the words that are said (and there's not very many) in this magnum Malick opus are mostly voice-overs, and likely inner prayers as opposed to human interaction, another one of the experimentally distancing motifs in the film.

The opposing forces of Dad's nature versus Mom's grace hit son Jack (Hunter McCracken, a delightfully non-professional acting presence) the hardest as he's grapples both sides.  The middle of stretches of film encompasses Jack's childhood with a serene elegance, both as boys-will-be-boys enchantment and loss of innocence.  An early childhood tragedy at a local swimming pool is potent is its immediacy, as is the curiosity of random of boyhood mischief.  A later years tragedy proves more problematic, as seen by the eyes of a grown up Jack (Sean Penn), a dour, seemingly aimless man in search of a higher being (as visually expressed by a seemingly endless upward elevator ride.)  And while perhaps not a faith-enriched film (at least not one that could count on a religious uptick in ticket sales), the search and approval of God appears throughout The Tree of Life (the film opens with a quote from Job), whether directly or not...in such esoteric, inaccessible pet projects like this, nothing may be quite it appears.  And as the film starts, or ends, or whichever side it appears to on, perhaps the ultimate meaning behind this mad-director-gone-wild experiment is that the creation of human life may be tantamount to creation of life itself.

And this may the root of the absorbing, exasperating sequence in which Malick explores just that.  Enlisting the aid of special effects royalty Douglas Trumbull (who worked on the awe-inspiring, non-computerized imagery for 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that could be seen as an influence, depending on the beholder's eyes), Malick starts at the very beginning, and the nifty, and again, the absolutely visually absorbing sequence charts the Big Bang and various eras of the universe, complete with a cameo appearance from a dinosaur.  What could be seen as showboating, or pretentious, or a filmmaker's ego gone full tilt (and\or all of the above) is nearly as achingly beautiful and tedious as everything else that surrounds The Tree of Life.  But again, the mystery evokes, as to what the whole thing means, and why is it here?  For a film that intentionally gives very clues as to it's true essence, a sad fact permeates that perhaps it all adds up to not that much at all, and as nature and grace battle it out for supremacy, there's little in store for real, substantial human drama.  That The Tree of Life, with it's compelling and meticulous craftsmanship offers but a tease of provocation both emotionally and intellectually.  Perhaps it all amounts to the most ambitious nature documentary ever filmed.

Not that that means nothing, for the production elements are top drawer across the board.  Using the same cinematographer he used for his last film The New World (2005), Malick clearly has hit alchemy with Emmanuel Lubezki, whose pristine and fluid photography is breathtaking in its scope and limitless in its ambitious.  Lubezki previously brought other hard sell films like Children of Men (2006), Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002) and Sleepy Hollow (1999) an inimitable style and flow that's evocative, new and also kind of poetic, and this film certainly reminds why the Mexican-born cinematography is such a favorite of prickly auteurs and a visionary in his own right.  And perhaps a vexation to his films editors (The Tree of Life had five!)  Longtime Malick collaborator Jack Fisk (Mr. Sissy Spacek-- the two met on Malick's first feature, Badlands) does his typical superior job in production design, both with the more real environments that beautifully detail idyllic Americana and the stranger ones.  The score by Alexandre Desplat is so shaped by the other classical pieces of music in the film, that one would be hard pressed to tell what exactly is original and what isn't...another staple of Malick filmmaking.

What does one do with a film like this?  It's as easy to throw it away as it is appreciate it for what it is.  For everything that feels misguided (which would include most of the Sean Penn-modern-age stuff) or juvenile (the story or lack of one, or tease of one, full of holes, either intended or discarded) or boring (perhaps the entire film in its entirety), there's another nagging feeling that perhaps The Tree of Life will creep itself into the cinematic mind-frame and live forever, that there's clearly a method in Malick's madness.  But until that happens (at least for this patient, and attentive moviegoer), I suppose what I have to appreciate is the idea of filmmaker on limitless ambition and scope, and mad brio making a film that no one else could have possibly ever entertained the idea of ever making, the hope that it lingers and settles the way some films need to, before making it's ever-lasting legacy, and of course those pretty pictures.  For now, I suppose I do what fans of Terrence Malick are prone to doing...wait.  C+

The Tree of Life: Part One Reconciling the Hype

Every so often, sometimes years in between, a film comes along that often sight unseen has the illusion to change, distort, and powerfully absorb the movie-obsessed population.  Often this comes a major filmmaker whose prior work has been analyzed, dissected and over-watched and seen as beacon and standard.  The filmmaking already exhibited by Terrence Malick, whose five previous films have been leisurely made throughout his four-decade career, proves that his movies are those rare celluloid creations to be treasured.  The challenge of course that in building an totally excusable fandom around his work requires a lot of patience.  Not just because of his snail pace in making pictures, lots has been said of his perfectionism, but the patience required in actually watching his movies, all of which are precise and delicate, meandering and slow.  His latest, The Tree of Life, premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival this past week (his first trip to the festival since 1998's The Thin Red Line; he's only made one movie in the interim, The New World, 2005) and was greeted with mixed results.  There were "boos," of course there would be, as well as solid praise for what looks like a beautifully intriguing and maddening piece of work exploring the meaning of it all, or something, all while distilling 1950s Americana.  As one not fortunate enough to be in France, I wait, an all too familiar feeling when dealing with Malick, but as the we get to the release, now within days-counting reach (unfortunately cinemaphiles not currently residing in major cities, will have to wait longer), there's that irritating question mark.  And one, and really this is just personal therapy I'm sharing, must take a deep breath and rationalize that no, The Tree of Life will not be the cinematic equivalent of the second coming of Christ (though many early reviewers have likened to a religious experience) and that no film could ever really live up to expectations set so high by the devotees of Malick.  Sure some all already proclaiming it's a masterpiece, and that will continue, others are more taciturn about distilling their acclaim, fully aware that cinematic experiences like I'm sure this is (and is true of the rest of body of work) are movies require more waiting and more patience.  His past films always seem to delight and haunt and linger long afterwards, while watching them can lull and confuse.  Taking a deep breath...

And while others enjoy they're favorite sports teams, or television shows, or recreational drugs, or what have you, I have the cinema.  And those tingling with anticipation moments when a proven artist births something new, there's always that pre-euphoric panic of what if it all goes wrong. Perhaps the last time an auteur had this much at stake was last winter when Darren Aronofsky unveiled Black Swan, the time before that might have been when Paul Thomas Anderson released There Will Be Blood (2007), another filmmaker that keeps us waiting, thankfully he is allegedly going back to work with a film called The Master, slated for release in 2013, starring Joaquin Phoenix, oh boy.  But it's different with Malick, who in five films has exhibited such an uncommon eye for slice of life Americana, even when settled in different, scary and exotic locations.  There's a beatific naturalism and beauty, even in stories hardly beautiful.  An obsessively detailed place for dreams and nightmares.  Working on his must be exhausting, that's the only excuse for such little output.  And for that reason, he's likely one of the very few (perhaps the only one in our current climate) who could get away with what he does, for his films aren't at all accessible, four quadrant runaway successes; they require too much time, and typically multiple viewings.  Yet there's a strong and passionate legacy to all of his films, of which I truly doubt will change, whatever the initial, or long-standing reaction to The Tree of Life is.  Malick has been compared to Stanley Kubrick, and more than one early reviewer has compared The Tree of Life to 2001: A Space Odyssey; again taking a deep breath.

His first film, and I would strongly argue, his best, though that's not a fight I want have was Badlands (1973), which came out in a different movie world, likely the solar opposite to one today, or even the one a decade before it came out.  Malick was of the generation of other prominent New Wave American filmmakers that churned out the most challenging and biting of product during the late 1960\early 1970s, although Malick might have been the most unassuming of a bunch that included Robert Altman, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, et al.  And perhaps Badlands was kind of unassuming when it opened, for what a strange and beguiling film it was, and still is.  Starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, the film was a dramatization of a real-life killing spree that took place in late 1950s.  I think the poster's tagline explains it best:

"He was 25 years old.

He combed his hair like James Dean.

She was 15.

She took music lessons and could twirl a baton.

For a while they lived in a tree house.

In 1959, she watched as he killed a lot of people."

And the film like the above words, is oddly settled, strangely beautiful, and a brilliant mixture of the innocence and violent.  With also a squarely American treatise that our country, like the young killers in Badlands, have always mixed the innocence with the violent hand in hand.  A more urgent comment on American mores came five years after Badlands with Days of Heaven, in which set during the turn of the century (his films were always looking back) starred Richard Gere and Brooke Adams as a couple trying to get out of poverty.  A bigger statement was raised, but truth be said, I myself have to revisit the film; it was the first Malick picture to win an Oscar, for Best Cinematography (all of films, except for Badlands, have been nominated for they're pretty pictures), and Malick himself won the Best Director at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

He sat the next two decades out, and returned with The Thin Red Line (1998), based on James Joyce's novel, a WWII epic that had the misfortune (or maybe not) of being released the same year as Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.  Featuring an all star cast that included Sean Penn (also in The Tree of Life), John Cusack, George Clooney and John Travolta, largely set during the battle of Guadalcanal.  The movie appears not at all interested in it's cavalcade of celebrities (all of whom, I'm sure jumped at the chance to work with the mysterious enigmatic filmmaker), for Malick is through and through always the star of films, even as the unassuming man himself will never do press releases, and rarely is ever photographed.  More challenging and cerebral than Speilberg's more popular epic, there's still an broader scope in Malick's meditative portrait of war.  Seven years later came The New World (2005), which went even further back in American history, focusing on the love story between John Smith and Pocahontas, and again showcased his gifts for a broader, serious story tapered into a poetic, prosaic way; nature and the outdoors are important in all of his films.  Distributor New Line Cinema botched the release of The New World so badly that it was quite clear which cut of the film got shown where...I still feel cheated, but whatever version I saw was meticulous and ripely beautiful, if perhaps for the first time, slightly missing the early magic.

Surprisingly, and perhaps most shockingly of all, the elusive filmmaker is already preparing his next film, a love story starring Ben Affleck, Rachel MacAdams, Javier Bardem, Rachel Weisz and The Tree of Life co-star Jessica Chastain.  Known now just as Untitled Terrence Malick project, with an IMDb release date of 2012, which means I'll give it five or six years to see the light of day.

 And now I wait.  Taking another deep breath...

The Tree of Life Trailer

The Tree of Life

From the Desk of Terrence Malick….

We trace the evolution of an eleven-year-old boy in the Midwest, JACK, one of three brothers. At first all seems marvelous to the child. He sees as his mother does with the eyes of his soul. She represents the way of love and mercy, where the father tries to teach his son the world’s way of putting oneself first. Each parent contends for his allegiance, and Jack must reconcile their claims. The picture darkens as he has his first glimpses of sickness, suffering and death. The world, once a thing of glory, becomes a labyrinth.

From this story is that of adult Jack, a lost soul in a modern world, seeking to discover amid the changing scenes of time that which does not change: the eternal scheme of which we are a part. When he sees all that has gone into our world’s preparation, each thing appears a miracle—precious, incomparable. Jack, with his new understanding, is able to forgive his father and take his first steps on the path of life.

The story ends in hope, acknowledging the beauty and joy in all things, in the everyday and above all in the family—our first school—the only place that most of us learn the truth about the world and ourselves, or discover life’s single most important lesson, of unselfish love.

Stop the teasing...I really cannot accept this anymore.  I've been waiting, very patiently for Mr. Malick, ye of intense artistry and such slow to action, to fill my movie-going passion that he delivers.  The Tree of Life is teasing with it's first press material, only a year after it's first supposed release date.  Unfortunately, the movie will take a bit longer to see the inside of a movie theater, thanks of Malick's notoriously "taking his time" approach, and dastardly behind the scenes business crap-- Fox Searchlight Pictures has come to the rescue with plans for a May 2011 release.  This marks Malick's fifth feature film in a 35 year career.  Funnily enough, Malick is already prepping his sixth film, very much out of character...possibly the Clint Eastwood ascetic is kicking in.